


how she will stand

by Jeanne



Category: Doctor Who, Heroes - Fandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-19
Updated: 2009-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-04 15:55:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jeanne/pseuds/Jeanne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hiro Nakamura isn't the first time traveling man Rose Tyler has met. He isn't even the second.</p>
            </blockquote>





	how she will stand

**Author's Note:**

> Crossover with Heroes and written during that show's first season.

          There's a flash in the New York skyline that's seen the world over, caught on tape and transmitted just moments before the electromagnetic pulse shorts out the camera.

          When it's gone, so is New York City.

          Not even ten minutes after the flash and her people are already hard at work as the video plays repeatedly in the background, determined to discover whether or not this is some new alien threat they need to know about. The world is in chaos as rumors of terrorists or Cybermen or something worse fill the streets, and governments urge their people to stay calm.

          Then she wakes up and she knows this wasn't a dream.

          And it isn't reality, she knows, but it could be; she feels this with a bone deep certainty.

          She goes to work the next morning, unable to shake the dream from her thoughts. She's not sure she wants to, if

(_and there's no if about it, she knows, because she's felt this way about a dream before, once before, the whisper of something real and true, something that couldn't be ignored until she followed it to its end_)

what she's dreamed is true, because there has to be a way to stop it.

          She doesn't tell anyone of the dream, not her stepdad, not her ex-boyfriend, not his current boyfriend, and not anyone else where she works. She doesn't know why, only knows this: this is hers and she can't tell anyone, not yet.

          And just after lunch, when her coworkers are still straggling in in singles and in pairs, she finds out why.

          Everything stops, from the pair talking next to her open door to her aide pouring her a cup of tea in the break room. Even the televisions in the main room, always set to the news, are quiet, not on mute but quiet, the ever-present hum of working electronics silenced. A quick glance at her watch shows that even that has stopped, and her heart starts to pound as she feels a presence close to her that wasn't there before. She looks up.

          There is a man standing next to her desk. A short Japanese man with a round face and a grim expression. And a sword, her mind notes, don't forget the sword. She knows, somehow, that he is connected to her dream.

          "Who are you?" she asks, her hand nowhere near the alarm at the bottom of her desk since it would be useless to call the unresponsive security. She does, however, clutch at the gun hidden away from this man's sight; she hasn't been able to take the moral high ground in a long time.

          "Hiro," he answers reflexively as he looks around, forehead furrowed. "Hiro Nakamura. This isn't where I'm supposed to be."

          She hides a smirk at that, because that's oh-so-familiar to her, finding yourself in a place (and time, her mind chimes in) you aren't supposed to be.

          "This hasn't happened in a long time," he continues, and the tone of his voice is such that she suspects that he's forgotten that she's within hearing range. "Not since I learned to control my time jumps."

          Her heart jumps at that, at those simple and oh-so-complicated two words at the end of his sentence, and she wills it to calm down, wills her voice to stay even when she speaks. "What do you want?" she asks, her hand slowly easing from around her gun.

          His eyes flash back to her face, the confusion in them turning into determination. "There's somewhere I need to be," he says. "Someone I need to warn. I need to go."

          "Wait!" she calls out as he starts to scrunch his face in concentration. His time jumps? she wonders. "Please!"

          His face smoothes out, his concentration interrupted by her two words. "I don't have time for this!"

          "You're a time traveler, you have all the time you need!" she snaps back angrily. And, oh, she knows that's a lie, because time travelers, more than anyone, are constrained by the vagaries of time. But she also knows that if he goes now, she'll never see him again, this man who can travel through time without a TARDIS, and she can't have that, not when she's just met him. "Look, whatever you need," she says, "maybe I can help."

          He looks at her, disbelieving, and she smiles awkwardly at him. "Please," she repeats. "What do you have to do?"

          He breathes out and she knows she's won him over somehow. "I have to save the world," he tells her, and he says it with such simple confidence that she wonders if she was ever like that

(_she was, she knows, before she died, but that seems like a lifetime ago, in a past where saving worlds was easy, so easy when compared to here and now_)

and she feels a flash of envy towards this man who wants to save the world.

          She doesn't voice any of this, though, instead says, simply: "The bomb. In New York."

          There's surprise in his face when she says this. "You know about...?"

          She nods. "I dreamt it. Last night. It was..." she shudders as she remembers the dream-that-isn't, "...horrible." She's seen so very many things in her short life, but she doesn't think she will ever get used to it, the casual destruction that seems to happen all too often.

          "You're one of us," he says, and this time, it isn't in surprise but in understanding. "Precognitive, like Isaac was."

          She knows that word, precognitive, and she knows it isn't her. She's not special, not like that.

          "It _was_ horrible," he tells her. "We couldn't--we couldn't do anything to stop it." He shakes his head and asks, almost musingly: "How do you stop an exploding man?"

          "You're from the future," she works out carefully, everything he's revealed so far falling into place in her mind.

          "Yes," he confirms with a quick nod.

          "Where New York already exploded," she continues on. He nods again and she shakes her head in response. "Then you can't," she says.

          He frowns. "What?"

          "Change the future," she clarifies. "Not when you're already been part of the events. There are some things you just can't change." A long-ago memory flashes through her mind, of a church and a man, so very brave, and a screech of tires on the pavement. "I've tried. It doesn't work. Not like you want it to."

          Something flashes in his eyes and she thinks, for a brief moment, that he understands, that he _knows_ what she's talking about in that way only time travelers can, but then it's gone and he looks even grimmer than before. "I have to do this," he says. "I have to try."

          She looks at him for a long moment, then closes her eyes and nods. She can understand that. "What do you need to do?" she asks him. And she knows this as well: this is what she's been waiting for, since that day on Bad Wolf Bay, and she cannot ignore its call. "To save the world?"

          He smiles

(_and oh, does it transform his face, she thinks, this expression that looks more natural on him than the grim look does_)

and he tells her.


End file.
